The Space Between Us (14 page)

Today, Hyder was sitting by Pooja’s bed when she reached her daughter’s side. “How is she?” she asked, and Hyder flashed her a big smile. “Doing well,” he said. “Doctorji was in on his rounds, and even he said Pooja didi was looking tip-top today.”

Bhima glanced at Pooja, relieved to see that Hyder’s presence had indeed cheered her daughter up. “Did you sleep last night, beti?” she asked gently.

Pooja smiled. “It’s all better now, now that you and Hyder are here,” she said. “How is my shorty? Does she miss her mother at all?”

“She misses you a lot,” Bhima lied. “All the time she is asking about you, only—when will Mummy come home, when can we go to the mela together?”

It was the wrong thing to say, she realized, as she saw the pained look on Pooja’s face. “Tell her, Ma,” she whispered. “She needs to understand. Tell her I’m not coming home.”

Hyder cleared his throat. “I’ll be back later,” he said.

The two women watched the youth leave the room. Pooja reached for Bhima’s hand. “I’m glad he’s helping you, Ma. I am so ashamed to have caused you all this trouble…”

“Trouble? Listen, chokri, who do you think I am? I’m not some woman from the marketplace. I’m your mother, I carried you in my stomach for nine months.” Despite herself, Bhima smiled. “Even then you were a fighter cock—kicking me in my belly all the time. Baap re, I thought I was giving birth to a wrestler like Dara Singh.”

Pooja turned her face away from her mother, but Bhima saw the tears rolling down her cheeks. All these tears shed in the world, where do they go? she wondered. If one could capture all of them, they could water the parched, drought-stricken fields in Gopal’s village and beyond. Then perhaps these tears would have value and all this grief would have some meaning. Otherwise, it was all a waste, just an endless cycle of birth and death; of love and loss.

Pooja was in a talkative mood that day. Before Bhima’s disbelieving eyes, her daughter seemed to come to life, so that despite the gaunt face and the eyes that were unrealistically shiny, she could see some trace of the old Pooja. In the afternoon she begged her daughter to sleep for a few hours, but Pooja insisted she wanted to talk instead. She reminisced about when she first met Raju and the day Maya was born; she lamented the fact that she had ever left Bhima behind in Bombay. “We should’ve had you move with us, Ma,” she said. “Then all these years of separation would not have hurt as much as they do now. Raju was an orphan—what did he know about family love? But I should never have given you up.” The thin face was flushed, almost luminous, as if lit up by an inner light.

Watching Pooja’s face, Bhima felt a moment of unease. “Beti, you are tiring yourself too much with all this talking-talking. Rest, na.”

But Pooja was burning like a candle. “Soon there will be nothing
but rest, Ma. Today is a good day—I feel strong. Let me talk. Also, I must tell you everything about Maya. Ma, the girl is very soft-hearted. Gets hurt very easily. She’s also very quick to learn. Knows how to write, already.”

She was quiet for a minute while she caught her breath. Her cheeks were red, fevered. “Another thing. There is some money in the bank—our katha is in State Bank. The slip book is kept in the safe inside the metal cupboard. You remember the cupboard that Serabai gave us as a wedding present? That one. Take all the money out. I wrote some bearer checks before we came to the hospital.”

“Beti, beti, this is not the time to be talking about money-foney. I will manage, I promise. I will make sure that not a hair on your daughter’s head is harmed, as long as I’m alive.”

Pooja’s eyes glistened with tears. “Ma, I know. That is the only reason I can die in peace. Without you, I would have had to come back as a ghost to take care of my little one.”

“Achcha, sleep now, beti. Preserve your strength. Sleep. I will be here when you wake up.”

Pooja didn’t wake up. Nor did she go without a fight. When the two men came to gather her up, her countenance showed the signs of her colossal struggle, as if her face had been trampled by the hooves of death.

Again, Bhima and Hyder stood at the funeral site, and Bhima watched as the flames did their demonic dance over her daughter’s body. Maya, Bhima kept whispering to herself. Remember, you are all the little one has. Be brave, old woman, for her sake.

Three days later, Hyder came to the train station to see them off to Bombay. Under the bright light of the day, she noticed lines on his young face that she hadn’t seen at the hospital. “If I live to be a hundred—” she began.

He stopped her with an embrace. “Didi,” he said. “Please. Just—go in peace and try to forget all this badness.” They stared at each other for a full moment, while Maya pulled impatiently on Bhima’s hand.

They boarded the train and found their berth. Looking at Maya’s small head, with her hair neatly parted in the middle, Bhima sighed. “I don’t know how I will manage,” she whispered to Hyder, who was standing on the platform outside their window. What she meant was she didn’t know this child the way she knew Pooja. She didn’t know what the inside of Maya’s mouth looked like, what the small of her back felt like, whether she liked sweet foods or sour, how she liked to be comforted when she was sick.

“It’s okay,” Hyder said. “Keep faith, didi, keep faith.”

Those were the last words Hyder said to her before the train pulled out of the station. She watched his sweet, pensive face get smaller and smaller until she couldn’t see it anymore.

S
era! Dinu! Welcome, welcome, welcome into our humble home,” Aban Driver screams as she greets them in the doorway of her flat. “Ae, where’s Viraf? Is he parking the car or what?”

Dinaz laughs as they enter the passageway that leads to the living room. She has always had a soft spot for the woman at whose home her parents first met.

“Good to see you, Aban aunty,” she now says. “Viraf is coming—he got held up at work. He’ll be here a little late.”

“Perfectly okay, perfectly okay,” Aban says. “That poor boy, working so hard. But of course,” she adds, eyeing Dinaz’s swelling belly, “he must, now that he will have a little one to support.” She and Sera exchange a knowing look.

As they enter the crowded living room, Pervez Driver comes up to greet them. Sera is taken aback at how much he has aged since she ran into him at a friend’s wedding last year. “Hello, Sera. Hello, Dinaz,” he says, in the shy and tentative way he has always had around Sera. Or maybe he’s like this around everybody, Sera thinks. “Please come and make yourself at home.” He shoos off some of the young boys who are sitting on the couch to make room for the two of them.

“Where’s Toxy?” Sera asks. After all, that is the reason they are
here, to celebrate the engagement of the youngest of Aban and Pervez’s three children.

“She’s in the other room with her friends,” Aban says airily. “You know how these youngsters are—not wanting to spend any time with us old fogies. And yes, my Dinu, you are now included amongst us oldies but goldies,” she adds with a giggle. “After all, you are a married woman now and expecting your first child.”

Dinaz jumps to her feet. “Nonsense,” she says with a smile. “I’m going to go find Toxy and the others.”

Pervez clears his throat, and the two women look up to acknowledge his presence. “Sera, what will you have to drink?” And before she can reply, he says, “Kingfisher, if memory serves me right?”

They all laugh at that. “See what a luccho he is?” Aban says. “Everybody thinks Pervez is this bhola-bhala henpecked husband, but I tell you, he’s a big-big flirt, this man.”

A man Sera has met at other functions but whose name she can never remember turns toward Aban. “But tell the truth, Aban, you still love this miserable husband of yours, don’t you?” When he laughs, Sera notices his gums show.

“Absolutely,” Aban says, taking Pervez’s hand and holding it to her cheek. “Arre wah, what kind of a stupid question is that? My hubby is the best of the best.”

“Oh, my God,” says Meena Gupta. She is one of the few non-Parsis at the party. “Look at Pervez, he is blushing like a bride. At this rate, we won’t know whether it’s him or Toxy that’s getting married.”

Another guest Sera doesn’t know slaps her knee as she laughs. “Good one, Meena, good one,” she says.

Sera sips the Kingfisher that Pervez has poured for her and looks around discreetly. Despite a new coat of paint, it is amazing how
much the room looks the same as it had the day she first met Feroz here, at her twenty-eighth birthday party.

She glances at Aban’s round face, with its sagging, fleshy cheeks and multiple chins and marvels at how time has moved like a claw across that face, pulling it down with its harsh hand. Without the slightest hint of vanity, Sera glances at her reflection in the mirror of the Godrej cupboard that stood across the room and realizes that somehow she had been spared the ravages of time. Her middleaged face has retained its youthful, alert vigor, and her skin is as smooth and tight as it had been when she met Feroz. In contrast, Aban’s face has gotten as soft and mushy as a pudding. Her whole appearance is as shabby as this living room, with its old, unmatched furniture, the jaalas of dust under the chairs, the creaking ceiling fan that looks as if it has not been cleaned in twenty years. In contrast, Sera’s living room sparkles like a jewel, with its pale, newly painted walls, the low, noiseless hum of the air conditioner, the expensive sofa set that Feroz had had specially built for the apartment, and the rosewood coffee table that Bhima polishes daily. Sera tries to remember if Aban had been this sloppy when they were younger. Even now, although she is dressed up for the special occasion, Aban’s bra strap keeps slipping out from under her sleeveless sari blouse, and there is a brown stain on her bosom where some chutney or sauce had undoubtedly fallen on it.

But if Pervez notices any of this, he does not seem to mind. Sera notices how he never wanders too far from his wife and how, even when the Drivers are on opposite sides of the room, their eyes stray toward each other continually. Once, Aban blows a kiss across the room at her husband, and with a quick movement of his hand, Pervez catches it. Sera smiles when she sees that, and noticing this, Pervez smiles back sheepishly and raises his shoulders in a slow shrug.

Good old Aban and Pervez, Sera thinks to herself. Married all these years and still they act like lovebirds. She is aware of a sharp, sudden pain that she recognizes as envy. In order to bury it, she takes another sip of the Kingfisher, then looks up to see Aban making her way toward her. “Ae, come on, Sera, why such a long-tall face? The beer’s not chilled enough or what?”

“The beer’s fine,” she says. “No, I’m enjoying myself, just sitting here thinking…”

“Of course, of course,” Aban says, her mouth curving downward, so that she looks like a sad clown. “I am so insensitive at times, baap re baap, I could shoot myself. What a bafaat-master I am, a big, fat blunderbuss. You must be missing your dear Feroz, of course. After all, this is where you first met, na?”

Sera looks at her oldest friend, unsure of what to say. She envies Aban her innocence, her simple way of dividing the world into love and not-love; good and bad. But what she has been feeling is so much more complicated than that. Ever since Feroz’s death she has had to grapple with this complicated equation, this bhelpuri of regret and resentment, of love and bitterness, of forgiveness and blame, of loneliness and relief. Does she miss Feroz? She is unsure of the answer. She does not miss the shame-inducing beatings, his clenched anger, her own cowering servility, and the hypocrisy of pretending that all is well in her marriage. No, that she does not miss. In fact, what she misses is not the marriage but the dream of the marriage. Even now, after all the intervening years, she misses the man she had thought she was marrying. She misses the aggressive courtship, the relentless wooing. She misses the fact that she will never know what it is to have a marriage like Aban and Pervez’s—to be married for years and years and still blow each other a kiss across a room.

Aban doesn’t give her a chance to reply. “Ho, Sera, remember the trip to Matheran? What-what fun we had there, na? I tell you,
Pervez and I still talk about that trip to our kids. God, so young we were then.”

This time, Sera smiles with genuine pleasure. That had indeed been a fun trip. Feroz and she had been married for only three months when Aban begged them to accompany her and her husband on their vacation. “Come on, yaar, it will double our pleasure if you two come,” she’d begged. “Come on, come on, say yes, both of you.”

And a smiling Feroz had agreed.

“Remember those badmaash monkeys?” Aban is now saying. “How we could never relax while eating breakfast on the veranda?” She turns to the other guests. “If you’d set your banana down for a second, they’d swoop in and run away with it. Once, one tried taking it right out of my hand. I tell you, I screamed so loudly, I think I deafened not only that monkey but its children’s children.” They all laugh.

“Hey, hey, you’re forgetting the best part,” Pervez says. “One day, I had my eyeglasses sitting on the table, and one of these redarsed bastards comes swinging down the tree and takes off with them. And the cheek of him, he sits on a branch of a nearby tree, and what do you think? He puts on my glasses. Sits just beyond my reach chattering away in his monkey language. I was so irritated, I wanted to climb on that tree and give the bugger one-two tight slaps.”

“Oh no,” a guest says. “What did you do for the rest of the stay?”

“Arre, what do you mean?” Pervez says. Sera can tell by his uncharacteristically forceful manner that this is not Pervez’s first drink. “After all, we had our brilliant Feroz Dubash with us. So what he did was, he sat there watching the monkey. In a few minutes, Feroz is figuring out that whatever we are doing, the monkey is doing. So Feroz went inside and brought out his own glasses. First, he put them on, just like the monkey. Then, he removed
them and put them on his head. The monkey does the same thing. Then, Feroz puts one end of the frame in his mouth and nibbles on it. Same thing with the monkey. By this time, I was getting agitated, yaar. But my Aban tells me to trust Feroz. Just then, Feroz throws his glasses on the ground. And what do you know, the stupid monkey threw my glasses on the ground also. Quicker than a thief, I made a mad dash for them and picked them up. The stupid bugger sat on the tree showing us his yellow teeth and making funny-funny noises.”

“But that was brilliant, just brilliant, yaar,” Meena Patel says, as if the incident has just occurred. “Your husband was a smart man, Mrs. Dubash.”

Sera acknowledges the compliment with a slight smile that feels forced and tight even to her. Because Pervez’s recollection has unleashed another memory for her. She had forgotten the incident that occured toward the end of their stay in Matheran, but now she remembers it in all its vividness.

They had returned to their hotel after a late dinner at Matheran’s best restaurant. Earlier in the evening Feroz had been in a hearty, expansive mood. “My treat,” he said to Pervez as soon as they entered the place. “I don’t want you to touch your wallet tonight.” Sera shot him an approving look. She was acutely aware of the fact that Aban and Pervez did not have much money, although to judge by their generosity, you’d never have guessed their rickety financial situation. Feroz signaled to the waiter. He was a handsome youth of about twenty, with large, white teeth and an eager-to-please attitude. “Listen,” Feroz said to the boy. “I heard you don’t have a permit room here yet. But we’re from Bombay, and we’re used to a few drinks with our food. Understand? So see what you can do, achcha?” He slid him a twenty-rupee note. “And here’s some baksheesh for you,” he added.

The waiter bowed. “Give me a few minutes, sahib. Let’s see what I can come up with.”

As always, Sera was embarrassed by this overt display of power. And given Aban and Pervez’s humble means, Feroz’s gesture felt even more obtrusive. But one look at her friends’ admiring faces told her that she had misread the situation. Feroz winked at Pervez. “Look at her,” he said, pointing his chin toward Sera. “She hates it when I do these things. But what I say is, if you can’t get what you want, then you have to just take it.”

Aban nodded. “Money makes the world go round,” she said.

Just then the waiter returned with three cold bottles of Kingfisher. “From the owner’s special stock, sahib,” he said.

Feroz beamed. “Great.”

The two women ordered. “Ae, darling, make sure you order meat dishes, okay?” Pervez told his wife. “No plants or leaves, please. We are men, not goats.” He laughed, pleased at his own joke.

As the dinner went on, Sera noticed that Feroz grew quieter. She wanted to turn to him and ask if he had a headache, but fueled by the beer, Pervez was regaling them with stories from his boarding school days, and she was concentrating on laughing dutifully at the appropriate times. If the other two noticed Feroz’s withdrawing from the conversation, they didn’t say. “Let’s get another plate of biryani, no?” Pervez said at one point and then looked tentatively at Aban. Before she could reply, Feroz had signaled for the waiter. “Another biryani and two more bottles of Kingfisher,” he ordered. After the boy left, Feroz turned slightly toward Sera and gave her a look that she could not read. When the beer arrived, he poured himself a tall glass. Sera wanted to protest against his drinking too much, but Feroz looked as if he’d wrapped himself in a thin, cold sheet of ice. When she smiled at him, he stared back at her coldly, his face as distant as the moon.

“Su che, Feroz,” Aban said finally. “All quiet-quiet you’ve become?”

He smiled at Aban, but Sera could see that the smile did not travel up to his eyes. “Just listening to all of you,” he said unconvincingly.

Aban glanced at Pervez. “Chalo, maybe it’s time to get back,” she said. “It’s been a long day, no?”

On the way home, Feroz participated in the conversation as all of them lamented having to leave the green, peaceful hill station and return to hot, crowded Bombay. At the hotel, he and Pervez wrestled over paying the cab fare. “Come on, yaar, fair is fair,” Pervez protested. “You paid for dinner and all.”

But Feroz fixed the driver a look. “Do not take money from this fellow,” he said in a voice that brooked no argument. The taxiwalla accepted the note that Feroz was holding out to him.

“These menfolks,” Aban said to Sera, rolling her eyes. “Always fighting about something, when everyone knows what they’re really fighting about is the length of their ding-dongs.”

“Aban,” Sera cried out. “The things you say.”

“Come on, yaar,” Aban replied. “Stop acting like a virgin. This is one of the bonuses of being a respectable married woman, na?”

“Good night, Aban,” Sera said, with a smile in her voice. “You are too much for me at times.”

She and Feroz walked down the hallway toward their room in silence. Sera was conscious of an unspoken tension between them. She noticed that Feroz was holding himself stiffly, walking close to the wall to avoid touching her. “Are you okay, janu?” she inquired as they entered their room. “Have a headache or something?”

“I’m fine,” he said shortly. He headed for the bathroom, and when he emerged, he had changed into his pajamas. He had also changed into a different mood; his face was flushed, and a vein throbbed in his forehead. Sera stared at him in fascination, con
vinced that he was sick. She had never seen Feroz look like this. “Oh, God, Feroz, what’s wrong?” she said, reaching out for his arm.

He brushed her hand away. “Do not touch me,” he said through clenched teeth and it was then Sera realized that her husband was not sick, just furiously angry. Her mind went over the conversation at dinner. Had Pervez said anything that had upset Feroz? Had Aban’s behavior irritated him?